Investing early, with conviction, in female-led high-growth startups | GPs: @ElohoGM & @OdunEweniyi | Info (pitches, etc): linktr.ee/FirstCheckAfrica
Lagos, Nigeria
Based in Nigeria
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Credibility vs. visibility: where should founders focus?Odun & Eloho share why doing the work is just as important as building your brand-and how strategic visibility can add real value to your startup.
📽️ Watch here: piped.video/Dvb4nru5fa4
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🎉 Fireside Chats Are Back! 🎉
Join us on Jan 29th at 6 PM WAT for Launch to Seed: Fundraising Fundamentals.
Featuring:
✨ Namara (Flat6Labs Africa Seed Fund)
✨ Miranda Perumal (Scale)
💡 Learn VC basics & fundraising strategies for first-time founders
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FirstCheck Africa is at its core a pre-seed fund. Pre-seed startups may be pre- or post-launch and pre- or post-revenues.
If your startup is already generating revenues, then it’s had a product in the market for a short time.
In the second episode of our conversation series, Eloho and Odun discuss striking a balance between aiming for representation and targeting the same investment returns that the average early-stage fund seeks.
piped.video/Hh4qUGyAIN0
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founder-investor relationships, tech in Africa and everything in between.
We launched with a commitment to investing in the most dynamic, audacious and ambitious women who are building tech ventures on the continent.
12 companies in 4 countries later, we continue to invest!
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This Women's Month, we are excited to launch a new series of conversations aimed at audacious women building tech startups.
Featuring our co-founders, @ElohoGM and @OdunEweniyi, we’ll speak about how we invest, think about building startups...
piped.video/an4DVWR7Ijs
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If you're an ambitious founder building an exciting, high-growth, female-led company, FirstCheck Africa is open for business!
Happy New Year!!! 🥂
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We're celebrating our first day back at work in 2024 with an announcement from our newest portfolio company, @clevabanking (YC W24)! We're excited to have been part of the company's $1.5M pre-seed round.
YC-backed African fintech @clevabanking, founded by Stripe and AWS alums, has raised $1.5M in pre-seed funding.
The startup, launched last August, helps African individuals and businesses receive international payments by opening USD accounts. tcrn.ch/3tJhaK8
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Last year, only two beauty-tech startups on the continent raised funding: Kenya-Based Uncover Skincare (a Firstcheck Africa portco) And Egypt’s Glamera.
This post makes a case for why we must look beyond fintech. venturesafrica.com/beyond-fi…
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We invest up to $250K in pre-seed/seed rounds in high-growth, scale propositions. ❤️
📩 Send us your deck at firstcheck.africa.
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If we help more founders move from the "dead zone" to "fertile soil", or at least stop working in the dead zone, that helps everybody.
If you're a founder building a tech startup in Africa with at least one female founder, FirstCheck Africa would love to hear from you.
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We try to be empathetic. We want to be the best at delivering tough messages. The goal is to make FirstCheck Africa an early stage founder's most valued interaction, even when we're saying "No".
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We try to do more than say no; we try to give good feedback. Good feedback is clear, specific, and actionable.
It helps us be better investors. Our process forces us to challenge one another and align on a unified message.
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When it’s yes, it’s easy, but when it’s no, you have to put in the work.
So, one of the most important things we do each week at FirstCheck Africa is sending carefully drafted emails saying "No". It's hard work, but it's good work.
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One of our team will usually say: "We'll come back to you within a week with one of three messages: 'No', 'Yes', or 'Maybe'. If it's a ‘No’, we'll say why and try to give you feedback".
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contexts across industries and business models frequently while resisting the ease and comfort of making snap judgments.
At the end of each pitch, we talk to the founders about next steps.
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In fact, Tuesday is "pitch day". We keep the day free of distractions, and our team's calendar is back-to-back with first meetings that are both energising and exhausting. It's a massive mental and intellectual exercise because we're switching
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An important but little-spoken about aspect of the fundraise journey is feedback. When founders pitch, whether your answer is a yes or a no, it is important to give “good feedback”.
Founder experience is extremely important to us at FirstCheck Africa. We see many pitches.
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🎉 Big congrats to Jumba and its founders Kagure and Miano! 🌟 Especially excited to see a female founder leading the way. Check out their recent funding news: techcrunch.com/2023/02/19/ju…
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+ Start-ups in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt tended to have higher valuations pre-seed than other markets
Read more 👇🏾
medium.com/@temirk/what-i-le…
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We're sharing a thoughtful piece of work on early-stage startup valuations in Africa, published recently by @TemiRansomeKuti (who joined us last year as a Senior Associate), who spoke to over 200 founders about their rounds over the past few months. medium.com/@temirk/what-i-le…
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